Scavengers
by Kuroi-cho-tsuki-shiro
Summary: Byakuya is missing. His spiritual pressure has vanished. It now falls to Hisana and Ukitake to travel to the world of the living to find him. Byakuya x Hisana 50
1. Chapter 1

_**Author's Note: A story of Hisana and Byakuya. For previous stories in this sequence, please see my profile and click on the links.**_

_**Having been saved from a fire in Rukongai, Hisana has come to live with Byakuya. Now that he has gone missing while on duty in the human world though, Ukitake asks Hisana to accompany him and his men in their search. (And no, although she is dressed in a **_**shihakusho **_**she is not a **_**shinigami)…..**

The human world had changed. The city sprawled in every direction as far as the eye could see and there were lights, so many lights.

She had fallen. The others had stepped out of the _senkaimon _gate onto the air and she had assumed that that was simply how it worked in this world, but she had fallen and the man closest to her had snatched her around the waist. She had been ready to complain right up until she had seen the city and now she was hanging limp in his arms.

The city had moved on. Without her. She had not been a necessary part of it.

"I thought the world was ending the day I died," she murmured.

"Huh?" asked the man who held her, adjusting his grip.

"This is Tokyo, isn't it?"

"Yeah."

"I died here in 1940," she said, and he stared at her as if she was mad. Perhaps it seemed that way to him. _Shinigami _couldn't remember their lives after all and, so far as she knew, took no interest in human history. She had thought she might feel some sense of nostalgia, but there was little here to hang any such sentiment on. The landscape had taken on a gauzy quality, now that she was seeing it as one of the dead, and there was a soft hiss of white noise that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere.

"Hollows," said Captain Ukitake, pointing towards the city. His form blurred and disappeared. Then there was a rush of air around her and she was suddenly moving so fast that she threw up her hands to protect her face. The next thing she knew, her toes touched solid ground and the _shinigami _who held her shook her gently:

"Can you stand?" he asked. She tried and found she could. Since everyone else had been able to walk on air and move faster than her eyes could follow, she didn't feel quite so certain of anything any more. All around her, the _shinigami _had ranged out and were staring up into the sky. Hisana followed their gaze and her courage wavered. A half dozen bony white shapes hovered above them. They looked like birds of prey save that there were neither feathers nor flesh on their bodies and their bones looked bloated and heavy. Their heads were long, pterodactyl-like, and, in their eye sockets, cold yellow flames burned.

As she watched, one swooped down. It didn't come for them, but landed a short distance away on a heap of detritus. It stabbed its beak down into the rubbish and began to eat with the grabbing motions and gusto of a hungry nestling. When it raised its head again, its beak was red with blood.

One of the _shinigami _ran forward and sprang at the bird, dispatching it with a single blow that cleaved straight through its skull and down through the skeletal body. It vanished in an explosion of brilliant blue light that left the _shinigami _standing poised atop a heap of human rubbish. He was staring down at something she couldn't see.

"Captain!" he called.

Ukitake's outline blurred again. The other _shinigami _too. The man who seemed to have taken responsibility for Hisana slipped his arm around her waist again and, before she could object or refuse, there was that nauseating sensation of movement again and she was standing atop the rubbish heap wth the others. She immediately wished that he hadn't brought her here.

In the midst of the piles of waste, there lay a man's body. Well, not a man. From his black _shihakusho, _it was clear that he had once been a _shinigami, _but little now remained either of his physical body or of the uniform he had been wearing. His chest had been ripped open and a substantial attempt had been made to tear his limbs from his body. His eyes were wide, his mouth open in such a way that it looked as if he had been screaming when he died.

One of the _shinigami, _who clearly had more stomach than Hisana, picked his way down to the corpse and, covering his mouth with one hand, checked the man's collar with the other:

"Yeah. Sixth Division," he called up.

"That bird didn't do this," said the man who had dispatched the skeletal vulture. He glanced up at the other birds still hovering in the sky above them: "They're too weak to be ordinary hollows. I'd be surprised if they were even sentient."

"They're probably subsidiaries to whatever it was that attacked Sixth," said Ukitake: "They're scavengers. Alright, I want you to spread out. Look for survivors, and, if we can take the bodies back then we'll do so." The _shinigami _began to move off: "And don't let any of those things land," he called: "If they do then you'll know where to look for the next body." He stepped over to Hisana's side: "Do you need to return now, Hisana-_san?"_

She shook her head. No. She had seen worse on the streets. Though it never made it any less shocking, there was no question of her turning back.

She looked around. There were no buildings here. She had thought at first that she was staring at the ravages of war, but it occurred to her now that what she was seeing were simply piles of unwanted nicknacks, papers and rotten food. This was a rubbish dump, not a war zone. It seemed to be a terribly mundane place for a battle.

One of the savenger hollows swept down and was immediately intercepted by a member of Ukitake's squad. The blade cut through its very centre and it exploded into streamers of blue light. The _shinigami _landed and resheathed his sword:

"Here!" he called.


	2. Chapter 2

The victim was lying on his side. There was blood on his face, but, save for this single wound, he seemed relatively untouched, with the exception of his wrists, which were slashed openas of he had taken a razor's blade to them.

At first, Hisana had assumed he was dead, but the _shinigami _who had gathered around were speaking to him even if he wasn't answering. She saw his eyes flick left and right. Terrified. Looking out at her from a corpse's mask.

"He's paralysed," Ukitake said, appearing beside her. Several elements of the scene fell into place:

"How?"

"A poison of sorts, I imagine."

"Will he be alright?"

One of the _shinigami _was healing his comrade's wrists. Hisana watched the flesh close up beneath the soft, green glow of the magic.

"I have no sense of his _reiatsu," _said Ukitake to the officer closest to him. He nodded:

"It's possible it might have drained him."

"No. For us not to be able to sense it at all would usually mean he was unconscious or dead. He is neither. I believe it meant to leave him alive for those vultures, but it meant for him not to be found. It's obscured his spiritual presence somehow."

"Obsscured it?"

"Yes. And not just from us. From him too." He pointed at the prone man: "Else he'd be able to defend himself. So, whatever this creature is, it's paralysing them, then leaving them here to be torn apart by those – things." They all turned to look at the remaining birds. All save for Hisana who was staring around her in consternation:

"He wouldn't have wanted to die here," she whispered.

Ukitake gripped her shoulder:

"Don't despair. We may yet find him."

"No. That's not what I mean," she said with conviction: "I mean, he would not want to die, here, in a garbage dump." She turned round on the spot, searching, though she was not yet sure what she needed to find. All she knew was that, in the fire, when she had believed her life was over, she had felt a desperate compulsion to see the sky again. Not the ugliness of a world consumed by flames. Just a clear patch of sky. "Somewhere else," she murmured, staring out across the black wasteland.

"Kuchiki-_taichou _would not desert his subordinates," growled one of the men, but Ukitake raised his hand for silence:

"Can you sense his _reiatsu, _Hisana-_san?"_

"No, I can't. It's just" – She frowned. It was like having a word on the tip of her tongue. It was a sense of certainty; a faith in something that lay just out of reach. She brushed her lips thoughtfully: "He would never leave his men, but if there was a way for him to lead those things away and he knew that – yes!" She slip-slid down the side of the rubbish heap.

"Hisana-_san!" _Ukitake called after her, but she didn't stop.

How light she was in this world! Her feet barely touched the ground as she ran and, though they splashed in puddles and kicked up scraps of paper, her passage was no more than a light breeze. Behind her, Ukitake was still shouting. No doubt he thought her reckless and perhaps she was, but, in this, she knew she had no choice. "Hisana-_san! _Hisana-_san!" _Something in his voice changed and she skidded to a halt, yards from the outer wall of the rubbish dump. A shadow had crossed the moon.

She looked up. One of the birds had broken away from the others and was flying after her, but, despite the warning cries from the _shinigami, _she didn't move. It swept overhead, continuing in the direction of the suburbs and the parkland. With a whoop of delight, Hisana wheeled back to the astonished men, pointing at the sky:

"It's not going after me! Don't you get it? It's going after someone else!"

As Ukitake gave orders for some of his men to follow her she took a flying jump at the high wall surrounding the dump. As she suspected, her spirit form managed far more momentum than her human one had ever attained, and she landed in a crouch atop the wall.

The hollow, silhouetted against the moon, looked like a great, spiny dragon, swimming through the night. As much as she feared she would not be able to outpace it, at least she now knew she had been right.


	3. Chapter 3

She ran down roads that were unrecognisable to her once-human eyes. Pastel-painted houses bathed in the glow of orange streetlamps. Electric lights in every window. Screens that showed tiny moving pictures in all the gaudy colours of the human world.

Stairs led up from the road into a park framed by the black lines of winter trees. She took them two at a time, skidded on a sheet of ice and continued on, flying down the left-hand fork of the path. Still following the hollow.

She ended her chase on the edge of a clearing. Beneath a spider's web of thin branches, she stopped. She had found Byakuya.


	4. Chapter 4

**To everyone who has faved and watched this story. THANK YOU!**

**The next part is called THE SHATTERED BLADE. I'll upload it now. If you can't find it, look on my profile page. As soon as this website re-allows internal links I will make sure that it is easier to navigate from story to story. Sorry for the inconvenience.**

**THANKS TO Shadewolf7, Truantpony, ForbiddenME, Pinky357, Immortal Vows, Chellythemadhatter, Insomniatic95, Sallythedestroyerofworlds23, UNTensaZangetsu, XDark FangsX, Superlynx, Ichigoforeverlove, Ennaalemap, Makaykay15, Kaze05, Splash into Forever, War90, Yellowwomanonthebrink, Bakane, Night Flower, Hallmarktrinity, Tiffany Park, Snowcrystals, Neristhaed, Splitheart1120, VanillaTwilight4, Nightfur, Happykiller93, Haildance, Ani-mimi, Mysticalphoenix-avalon, Jennyrdr, Goranr, Firebirdever, Isleofsolitude, Itachipanda, Pamila de Castro, Lemgem, Nightingale Heartz, Ashes2ashes121, Icyangel27, Westhardobbs, Devdhftf and Computer-Rukia-Addicted.**


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